Cyclical conceptions mark the passage of my penance

The protagonist of this story is someone who suffers stoically and has a mechanical pet. On the way to the story's conclusion the protagonist encounters a broken character. This person has a whip. Plot elements include sports and the comforting ritual of the smoker, and at least one character is motivated because of an addiction to drama.

There are many reasons to come to the Aeries of Alongquo, but mine has been the most spurious and fanciful. This is at odds with my nature, which has been declared staunch and direct, but still I have journeyed here, and here I am now imprisoned, though each dawn I mount Jalopard and soar into the illimitable skies. Each dusk I return, bound by my word, and by the madness of my Proconsul. Though the wind moans past my cave entrance each night, though Jalopard stirs and gazes at me with burning eye, I turn away from flight, and endure.

On the Fields of Thrassos, where the Iron God had fallen, and where his great bones lay rusting still, I had danced and raced as a young man. My courage was matched only by my fleetness of foot, and I denied no challenge, though failure meant death, or worse, dismemberment. Victory became a logical conclusion to my competing, and every fortnight was marked by pageantry and celebration as I won honors and accolades. It was there that I made love to Paleagogi, the daughter of the Proconsul, some five hundred spans within the dark fastness of the Iron God’s thigh. Where I marked my greatest conquest with a cry that I believe echoes still within the God’s thoracic cavity.

The Proconsul was pleased when Paleagogi became pregnant, and agreed to our marriage. He promised that I would witness the birth of our first child. But, being the twisted heresiarch that he is, he demanded I wrest the Whip of Tongues from Kaeliber herself. A new wife needed to know the touch of discipline, he asserted, gazing at me from the corner of his eyes, would need to feel the sensual slide of muscular leather along her thigh. I could not but accede, and so mounted Jalopard, swept my grandfather’s cloak of shadows about my shoulders and flew for the peaks.

But not before the Proconsul gave his final twist of the knife. He bid that I visit the maimed witches that swam within the amber tear drops that yet fell from the Iron God’s blank eyes, and allow them to drain me of my seed. With it they would impregnate Paleagogi each time she conceived, each time they killed our newborn child. I would indeed return to see the birth of my heir, no matter how long my quest took.

Kaeliber mocks me daily, flitting about the peak of Alongquo like the soul shard of a primeval bat, always ahead of me no matter how I urge Jalopard on, how I dig my heels into his iron flanks. Encloaked in shadow, as fast as the West Wind, we chase the mad Kaeliber, whose shrieks for liberation and death mock us as she outpaces us, until Jalopard’s eyes grow dull and we are forced to return to our cave.

And so I sit, each night, my back to the dark currents that suck and pull at my cloak of shadows, that beckon for my mount and I to return to the Fields of Thrassos and slay the Proconsul and take Paleagogi as my wife and be done with this madness. But instead each night I draw forth my pipe weed and tamp it down into my long-stemmed pipe, watching my fingers as they move and order and prepare. When I inhale and the flame bends into the bowl, when the weed catches fire and I blow forth my first plume of smoke, I feel a calmness enter my soul, and know that there is no flight from honor, no escape from my bond.